Tuesday July 19, 2016

A music industry group actually tried convincing Google and Bing to block any site or link with the word "torrent" from coming up in a search. Luckily, the courts used common sense this time and decided that would just be a tad excessive.

The group had called for a complete block on searches that include the word 'torrent' as well as blocking sites whose name includes the word. The court found that SNEP's request was far too broad, saying: "SNEP’s requests are general, and pertain not to a specific site but to all websites accessible through the stated methods, without consideration for identifying or even determining the site's content, on the premise that the term 'Torrent' is necessarily associated with infringing content". The court order goes on to point out that if the word 'torrent' was blocked, it would block access to all manner of non-piracy related sites.